Janice M. Van Dyck
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THE O’MALLEY TRILOGY
Every daughter lives a trilogy: her own story intertwined with her mother’s and her grandmother’s.
Like every woman, twenty-two year-old Eve Roberts is afraid she’ll grow up to be her mother. She wants to be better. But after her boyfriend dumps her, independent Eve returns home for advice and comfort. Amy, her mother, wants to help but is limited by her abilities, unevenly strengthened by her adversities and still healing from a bad divorce.
The two women spend a weekend together on a Florida beach in brisk, humorous, and sometimes painful dialogue about the family’s history and how it has defined the choices they have made. They uncover patterns and experiences handed down from generation to generation, irrevocably changing the course of each daughter’s life. Amy considers her passage from daughter to mother, from young to old, from beautiful to aging. The past becomes clear; the future is hard to see. On the same beach, young Eve begins to see her life as full of possibilities—if she can stand on her own. Both women know that they must somehow separate from the past without letting go of each other if they are to be the women they aspire to be.
Alternating chapters in a narrative voice between Eve and Amy, this powerful story reverberates with the memories of the mother/daughter relationships of both women as they struggle to understand their relationship and reaffirm their love.
Janice M. Van Dyck is a Philadelphia native now living on the west coast of Florida. Her twenty-five year corporate career spanned strategic management, organizational development, human resources and corporate communications. As a corporate officer, she developed strategies to link the company’s mission to its human assets through training, communications and executive coaching programs. Her passion was in the written word – telling the story of the company, its history, hopes and dreams in a way that inspired the loyalty and pride of its stakeholders. Her strength was her insight and ability to describe a situation exactly as it was, clearly, certainly and with compassion. This strength became the cornerstone of her writing style, now expressed through fiction.
MOTHER
As Eve began to grow into her own true nature, I became threatened by the differences that developed between us. Hadn’t I, after all, been teaching her everything I knew about living, everything she would need to know to survive me? She had to know what I knew. She had to be like me if I was ever going to be able to let her go. How could I let go of her to live her own life if she was unprepared, vulnerable to the same things I once was? All I could think of was to prepare her with everything I’d learned. And for this, she must sit and listen; she must act accordingly, predictably.
At first I tried to minimize our differences, “You’re just as headstrong as I was when I was young,” or “I had a shirt like that when I was your age.” Later I needed more direct control, “Stop talking on the phone and come help me in the kitchen,” and “A young lady shouldn’t do that.” Be like me, I was pleading. Make it easier for me to leave you.
How will I die peacefully if my daughter is not like me? How will I know she will survive me? For all I can tell, the cord was never really cut between us. We are both still connected at a place so deep, neither can fathom. We are inextricably the same, impossibly separated into two different worlds – each of us, for different reasons, needing somehow to remain connected across the widening gap of age, wisdom, and culture between us.
But I am also a daughter, I know this: Without my independence, I could not let go of my mother in death. As every girl must learn about being a woman from her mother, she must also seek, with equal intent, not to become her. So she will not die when her mother dies. So she can breathe on her own when the cord of life is finally and ultimately cut.
“I don’t have to worry about becoming my mother,” Eve said when she was seventeen. “I am my mother.” We both realized the unacceptable nature of that truth, and in growing discomfort we discussed it no more. It was six months before she came home with a cubic zirconium stud in her nostril.
“Don’t expect me to like it or approve of it,” I said finally. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“Some people say it looks elegant.” She raised her chin and tipped her head for effect. It sparkled under the living room lamp.
“I don’t think elegant is a word I would use to describe nasal jewelry.” This, my attempt to keep my position of superiority and wisdom. I would never accept it, and she would have to learn to live with that fact. She would have to learn to do what she wanted to do without needing my approval. S
